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Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Edit: I mean Ukraine war.
Yes but it's not clear yet who will win, and the church cannot afford siding with the losing side, especially that now it's weakest it's been since medieval times.
Edit parent meant Ukraine war, not the Israel conflict quote Pope had.
I do not have much hope that Palestinians would behave “better” according to any sensible measure of the word.
I would conjecture that many governments would position themselves differently and that criticism would face less obstacles.
In the end it would be as much of a catastrophe.
It also dilutes the current and very real responsibilities of the 'effectors'. In saying 'they would have done the same' it becomes very easy to justify the unjustifiable.
No matter who did it, it would still be 'evil'. There would be 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Specially when the labels would be applied to dead children and innocents under rubble. Everyone keeps forgetting them.
Just because you think they would do the same to you, does not justify your actions.
> [basically] What if in a different world Hamas had all the weapons plus the backing of the US while Israel only had shoddy weapons?
In a hypothetical world where Usain Bolt was raised on Greenland and became interested in competitive gaming: would he have become the fastest human? Probably not. Different timelines.
This Sam Harris exercise is meaningless. The goal is not to measure the level of evil in the hearts of <hamas> or <isreali government>. That’s impossible. Hypotheticals that have nothing to do with reality are also fruitless. The goal is to figure out what evil actions are being committed and stop them.
But the abuser only did those things because he was abused as a child for eight yea— What’s that got to do with the problem at hand?
The goal of thought experiment wasn't to measure evil or good. It's to determine if the lines between good and evil are that far apart.
If Ukraine was way stronger than Russia, would it try to annex Kursk and other non-Ukraine regions? Would it commit as many atrocities? No. It would be constrained by its desire to join EU. Could it do it if it had 30 more people, more nationalistic populace, and near infinite ammo supply? Probably.
But a litmus test, just tells you rough acidity, not exact pH either.
The big issue was world powers of WW2 deciding to just bequeath land to Israel.
The Israel ethnostate predates Hamas.
You even call it an ethnostate.